''Thoughts for the Time of War and Death'' () is a set of twin essays written by

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies seen as originating fro ...

in 1915, six months after the outbreak of

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

. The essays express discontent and disillusionment with

human nature Human nature comprises the fundamental dispositions and characteristics—including ways of Thought, thinking, feeling, and agency (philosophy), acting—that humans are said to have nature (philosophy), naturally. The term is often used to denote ...

and human society in the aftermath of the hostilities; and generated much interest among lay readers of Freud.

Disillusionment

The first essay addressed the widespread disillusionment brought on by the collapse of the

Pax Britannica ''Pax Britannica'' (Latin for , modelled after '' Pax Romana'') refers to the relative peace between the great powers in the time period roughly bounded by the Napoleonic Wars and World War I. During this time, the British Empire became the ...

of the preceding century—what Freud called "the common civilization of peacetime". Freud laments the collapse of the previously held idea that "the great world-dominating nations of white race" had reached a state of civilization that would prevent such continental wars in Europe from occurring. He recalls: "we had expected these people to succeed in discovering another way of settling misunderstandings and conflicts of interest". On this note, Freud also writes extensively about how the war had exposed a phenomenon of "cultural hypocrites"—that is, swaths of people who had been exhibiting certain civilized codes of behavior not out of their own instinctual impulses but out of an egoistic incentive to adhere to societal norms to reap rewards in society. The war had allowed for unrestrained expressions of people's more authentic and primitive impulses. In Freud's view, the war exposed that "there are very many more cultural hypocrites than truly civilized men" and that "in reality our fellow-citizens have not sunk so low as we feared, because they had never risen so high as we believed". Freud further expressed the view that the war had exposed that even intellectuals of a high stature may resort to narrow-minded and illogical conclusions, rooted in "emotional resistance" to logic, when such a situation as that of war arises. He comments that this was as shocking a disillusioning experience as was the decline of moral ethics during the war.

Discounting death

The second essay addressed what Freud called the peacetime "

protection racket A protection racket is a type of racket and a scheme of organized crime perpetrated by a potentially hazardous organized crime group that generally guarantees protection outside the sanction of the law to another entity or individual from vio ...

" whereby the inevitability of death was expunged from civilized mentality. Building on the second essay in ''

Totem and Taboo ''Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics'', or ''Totem and Taboo: Some Points of Agreement between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics'' (), is a 1913 book by Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoana ...

'', Freud argued that such an attitude left civilians in particular unprepared for the stark horror of industrial-scale death in the Great War. The essay ends with Freud suggesting that the "illusion" that saw death hidden from the consciousness was a mistake, as it made the reality of life less easy to bear. He remarks, "We remember the old saying:

Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum () is a Latin adage translated as "If you want peace, prepare for war." The phrase is adapted from a statement found in Roman author Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus's tract ''De Re Militari, Dē Rē Mīlitārī'' (fourth or fifth century AD) ...

f you wish peace, prepare for war.The times call for a paraphrase: Si vis vitam, para mortam f you wish life, prepare for death.

Influence

Freud's account of the centrality of loss in culture has been seen as seminal for his later work, '' Civilization and its Discontents''.

Translations

The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, translated by

James Strachey James Beaumont Strachey (; 26 September 1887, London25 April 1967, High Wycombe) of the Strachey family was a British psychoanalyst, and, with his wife Alix, translator of Sigmund Freud into English. He is perhaps best known as the general ed ...

, titles the work ''Thoughts for the Times on War and Death'', titles the first essay "The Disillusionment of the War" and titles the second essay "Our Attitude Towards Death". The ''Authorized English Translation'', published by Moffat, Yard and Company, New York, 1918, translated by Dr. A. A. Brill and Alfred B. Kuttner, titles the work ''Reflections on War and Death'', titles the first essay "The Disappointments of War" and titles the second essay "Our Attitude Towards Death".Project Gutenberg EBook
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References

External links

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A copy of the text

{{Sigmund Freud 1915 essays Essays by Sigmund Freud